CISAC awarded honors certificates in international security studies to 14 undergraduates who completed theses on policy issues ranging from speeding up the detection of a bioterror attack to improving the World Bank's effectiveness at post-conflict resolution.

Among the 2006-2007 participants in CISAC's Interschool Honors Program in International Security Studies were award winners Brian Burton, who received a Firestone Medal for his thesis, "Counterinsurgency Principles and U.S. Military Effectiveness in Iraq," and Sherri Hansen, who received the William J. Perry Award for her thesis, "Explaining the Use of Child Soldiers." The Firestone Medal recognizes the top 10 percent of undergraduate theses at Stanford each year, and the Perry recognizes excellence in policy-relevant research in international security studies.

CISAC honors students "can make the world a more peaceful place in several ways," FSI senior fellow Stephen Stedman told students and guests at the honors ceremony. "They can graduate and find jobs of power and influence [and] they can identify real world problems and solve them."

This year's class, which included several double-majors, represented nine major fields of study: biology, history, human biology, international relations, mathematics, management science and engineering, physics, political science, Russia-Eurasian studies. Some students headed to business or policy positions, while others looked forward to advanced studies in law, medicine, biophysics, security studies, or other fields.

"I hope that this is the beginning, not the end, of your contributions to policy-relevant research," CISAC senior research scholar Paul Stockton, who co-directed the program with Stedman, told the students. He added, "In every potential career you have expressed a desire to pursue, from medicine to the financial sector and beyond, we need your perspectives and research contributions, to deal with emerging threats to global security."

Many students expressed interest in realizing that hope. Burton said his aspiration is to attain "a high-level cabinet or National Security Council position to cap a long career of public service in foreign policy."

Katherine Schlosser, a biology major who is headed to Case Western Reserve University for joint MD-master's in public health program, said she hopes to "keep conducting innovative research and to eventually rejoin the international security studies community in some capacity."

The 2007 honors recipients, their majors, thesis titles, advisers, and destinations, if known, are as follows:

Brian Burton, political science
"Counterinsurgency Principles and U.S. Military Effectiveness in Iraq"
Firestone Medal Winner
Adviser: David Holloway
Destination: Georgetown University, to pursue a master's degree in security studies

Martine Cicconi, political science
"Weighing the Costs of Aggression and Restraint: Explaining Variations in India's Response to Terrorism"
Adviser: Scott Sagan
Destination: Stanford University Law School

Will Frankenstein, mathematics
"Chinese Energy Security and International Security: A Case Study Analysis"
Adviser: Michael May
Destination: The Institute for Defense Analyses in Alexandria, Va., for a summer internship

Kunal Gullapalli, management science & engineering
"Understanding Water Rationality: A Game-Theoretic Analysis of Cooperation and Conflict Over Scarce Water"
Adviser: Peter Kitanidis
Destination: Investment Banking Division at Morgan Stanley in Los Angeles

Sherri Hansen, political science
"Explaining the Use of Child Soldiers"
William J. Perry Award Winner
Adviser: Jeremy Weinstein
Destination: Oxford University in England, to pursue master's degree in development studies

Andy Leifer, physics and political science
"International Scientific Engagement for Mitigating Emerging Nuclear Security Threats"
Adviser: Michael May
Destination: Harvard University, to pursue a PhD in biophysics

James Madsen, political science
"Filling the Gap: The Rise of Military Contractors in the Modern Military"
Adviser: Coit Blacker
Destination: World travel; then San Francisco to open a bar

Nico Martinez, political science
"Protracted Civil War and Failed Peace Negotiations in Colombia"
Adviser: Stephen Stedman
Destination: Washington, DC, to serve as a staff member for Senator Harry Reid

Seepan V. Parseghian, political science and Russian/Eurasian studies
"The Survival of Unrecognized States in the Hobbesian Jungle"
Advisor: James Fearon

Dave Ryan, international relations
"Security Guarantees in Non-Proliferation Negotiations"
Adviser: Scott Sagan
Destination: Stanford University, to serve as executive director of FACE AIDS

Katherine Schlosser, biology
"Gene Expression Profiling: A New Warning System for Bioterrorism"
Adviser: Dean Wilkening
Destination: Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, to pursue a joint medical degree and master's in public health

Nigar Shaikh, human biology and political science
"No Longer Just the 'Spoils of War': Rape as an Instrument of Military Policy"
Adviser: Mariano-Florentino Cuellar

Christine Su, history and political science
"British Counterterrorism Legislation Since 2000: Parlimentary and Government Evaluations of Enhanced Security"
Adviser: Allen Weiner
Destination: Stanford University, to finish her undergraduate degree; Su completed the honors program as a junior.

Lauren Young, international relations
"Peacebuilding without Politics: The World Bank and Post Conflict Reconstruction"
Adviser: Stephen Stedman
Destination: Stanford University, to finish her undergraduate degree; Young completed the honors program as a junior.

Political science Professor Michael McFaul gave the Class Day lecture Saturday in Maples Pavilion.

If Stanford is indeed a bubble, political science Professor Michael McFaul deftly pointed out its radiant lining while simultaneously bursting it with a needle--in the form of sobering statistics and descriptions that paint a dour portrait of America's international standing--during his Class Day lecture on Saturday in Maples Pavilion.

Sponsored by the Stanford Alumni Association, the Class Day tradition gathers graduates and their families before a distinguished faculty member for a keynote address that is at once congratulatory and weighty. But McFaul, the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, began by describing his humble roots as a boy from Montana.

"When I came to Stanford as a 17-year-old freshman, I was raw and not ready for prime time," McFaul admitted. "I had never lived anywhere but Montana. I hadn't even set foot in California, let alone a foreign country."

In 1986, McFaul said he emerged from the Farm a dramatically different person--holding a bachelor's degree in international relations and Slavic languages and literatures, as well as a master's in Russian and East European studies. He had lived in the Soviet Union, Nigeria and Poland; and today, McFaul is regarded as one of the top scholars in terms of bringing together the theory and practice of democracy.

"I came here wanting to practice law and left here wanting to practice diplomacy," said McFaul, who in 2005 was appointed director of the Center for Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. "So, my time in the bubble changed me."

Then McFaul brought out the needle. He noted that, just as this year's graduates were first arriving on the Farm, President George W. Bush was outlining his "freedom agenda," a plan to transform the world. McFaul said the plan outlined Bush's strategy for promoting democracy around the world as a way of keeping Americans safe.

But so far, McFaul lamented, few of the plan's goals have been realized. "It hasn't been pretty out there," McFaul said. "While you have been living inside the bubble, a lot has been happening--much of it bad--outside of the bubble."

McFaul then reminded graduates of positive developments, such as the Rose Revolution in Georgia in 2003 and the Orange Revolution in Ukraine in 2004. And, no one, he added, misses the Taliban regime in Afghanistan or Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

"But overall, trends are disappointing," McFaul said. "In Afghanistan, democracy is barely holding on. In Iraq and Palestine, there's civil war."

Between 2003, when the departing undergraduates in the audience arrived as freshmen, and today, more than 3,000 American soldiers, roughly 60,000 Iraqis and more than 200,000 people in Darfur have died, McFaul said. He added that the number of al-Qaida's followers also has grown during the four years that the Class of 2007 was in "the bubble."

And yet, the graduates might have left Maples completely deflated were it not for the main message of McFaul's lecture, which was one of renewal. When he graduated from Stanford in 1986, McFaul gave a graduation speech at the ceremony for international relations majors in which he lamented the failing arms control treaty between the Soviet Union and the United States. He also expressed dismay that South Africa's apartheid regime had just declared emergency rule and that Washington seemed too confrontational or too indifferent to address either.

"However, after each of these periods, the United States had found a way to renew itself and become again a force for freedom and justice around the world," McFaul said. "So, my understanding of history gives me confidence in our capacity for renewal. But so does my sense of the future that comes from teaching here at Stanford University."

McFaul said he has taught enough of this year's graduates to know that they have the smarts, the drive and the convictions to turn things around--young men and women from throughout the United States but also from nations such as Afghanistan, Brazil, Egypt, India, Indonesia and Nigeria.

"Someone sitting here right now will someday open the first U.S. Embassy in a democratic Iran," McFaul said. "Someone sitting here right now will inspire a third grader in the South Bronx to become the first kid in his neighborhood to win a Nobel Prize in physics."

But in the effort to renew the world, McFaul also told the graduates they should not forget to renew themselves. He urged them not to describe whatever occupation they take up simply as a job title, but as an action verb; to occasionally welcome idle time to refocus their energies; to embrace uncertainty; and to continue to learn and stay connected to Stanford.

McFaul's parting message echoed the welcome address by Howard Wolf, '80, vice president for alumni affairs and president of the Stanford Alumni Association. "Alumni are the only permanent stakeholders" of the university, Wolf said. "Get involved, stay connected."

With the United States fixated on crime and corruption in Russia, Russians obsess about two other dramas: upcoming parliamentary elections and the war in the Caucasus region. The first drama might well have a happy ending, rare for Russian dramas these days. The second is almost certainly a tragedy in the making. Worse, the war in the Caucasus may eventually subsume elections altogether, resulting in their cancellation, civil resistance and even civil war. Before such a scenario gains more momentum, U.S. officials should look beyond Russian corruption and do what they can to lower the probability of democratic collapse in Russia.

One group of Washington-based pundits and exiled Iranians wants to push the United States into increasingly hostile and direct confrontation with the Islamic regime, using coercive diplomacy and even military pressure if necessary. This group also wants to encourage demonstrators inside Iran to rise up and confront the regime as quickly and boldly as possible, even if this would prompt violence, revolution or civil war. Some members of this group -- following in the footsteps of the Iraqi exiles and U.S. policymakers who favored installing exiled banker Ahmad Chalabi as leader of Iraq -- are determined to handpick Iran's next leader. Their choice is Reza Pahlavi, the eldest son of the last shah to rule in Iran.

A second group in Washington is pushing for a completely different U.S. policy toward Iran: detente. Increasingly, Iranian hard-liners have hinted that they might be willing to restrain Islamic radicals based in Iran who are stirring things up in Iraq. But in exchange, they've suggested, they would want guarantees that the U.S. will not support opponents of the Iranian regime. Desperate to hold onto power, Iran's leaders seem suddenly willing to deal with the U.S. in exchange for stability.

These proponents of engagement inside Iran have allies in the U.S. Since Hashemi Rafsanjani was elected president of Iran 15 years ago, a group of U.S. scholars, retired diplomats and businessmen (especially oil company executives) has acted as de facto lobbyists for the Islamic regime. They considered Rafsanjani to be Iran's great hope: a "moderate mullah" who wanted rapprochement with the West. When reformer [Mohammad Khatami] was elected to replace him in 1997, they changed horses, but not their recommended strategy of engaging with the existing regime.

Starting next fall, Stanford's 25-year-old International Policy Studies (IPS) master's program will double in length and expand its interdisciplinary scope to train a new generation of graduates prepared for careers in international policy-making and advocacy.

The two-year program is named in honor of Susan Ford Dorsey, president of the Sand Hill Foundation, who has made a gift of $7.5 million, which has been matched by university funds to create a $15 million endowment. According to program Director Stephen J. Stedman, the funding will be used to better integrate the program into the university's international policy research centers, increase access to courses in the law and business schools, use more full-time faculty to teach classes and introduce a practicum that involves solving real-world problems.

Ford Dorsey's endowment fulfills one of the key priorities of Stanford's International Initiative, according to Stedman, which is to address global problems by leveraging the university's cross-disciplinary and collaborative research and teaching. Ford Dorsey and her husband, Mike, serve on volunteer committees of The Stanford Challenge, which is seeking to raise $4.3 billion in a broad effort to expand the university's role in addressing global challenges and educating the next generation of leaders.

Stedman, a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), was asked to lead the program because he has experience in both academic and policy work. In 2003, Stedman served as research director of the U.N. High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, which former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan established to analyze global security threats and propose reforms to the international system. Upon completion of the panel's report, A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility, Annan asked Stedman to stay on as a special adviser to help get support in implementing the panel's recommendations. Following the U.N. world leaders' summit in September 2005, during which more than 175 heads of state agreed upon a global security agenda developed from the panel's work, Stedman returned to the Center for International Security and Cooperation at FSI.

According to Stedman, the revamped curriculum will give students the skills to understand the complex connections between poverty, deadly infectious disease, environmental degradation, resource depletion, food insecurity, interstate conflict, civil war, nuclear proliferation and terrorism.

"In a world where problems cross borders and disciplines, where threats that were previously thought to be independent are found to be interconnected, where distinctions between what is domestic policy and what is foreign policy are becoming more and more tenuous, students need training and perspective to break down disciplinary silos," Stedman says in a statement on the program's website. "They need the tools and dexterity to work across issue areas and in diverse policy arenas. They need to see connections that others miss, and be able to describe and explain those connections so that others will then see them too."

The program, which will be jointly administered by the School of Humanities and Sciences and FSI, will continue to admit about 30 students a year, with up to half coming from outside the United States. Students are required to have taken prerequisite courses in economics and statistics, and to speak a foreign language.

At a Feb. 7 dinner celebrating the newly endowed program, Gareth Evans, president of the International Crisis Group and a member of the U.N. High-Level Panel, talked about the need to "make idealism realistic" and discussed the concept of a state's "responsibility to protect" civilians as a new international norm. "In just five years, which is short in the history of ideas, a brand new historical norm" was introduced and recognized by much of the international community, he said. "This was a historic breakthrough. It should reinvigorate our belief in the art of the possible." Concerning the Ford Dorsey IPS program, Evans said, "When it comes to making idealism realistic  there really could be no better place anywhere in the world that this new master's program at Stanford."

The incoming fall cohort of IPS students will study writing and rhetoric and international economics. They will take core courses in Issues in International Policies, which introduces Stanford's policy research centers and provides analyses of current global issues, and Managing Global Complexity, which teaches concepts and theories of international relations while focusing on issues with competing policy concerns. "The goal is to understand that much of what we study today is marked by trade-offs among various goods that we seek to promote," Stedman says in the statement. "Globalization and interdependence creates opportunities for creative solutions to problems, while sometimes creating negative unintended consequences for policy solutions."

IPS students will take a "gateway" course before selecting a concentration during the second year. These specialized fields include democracy, development and the rule of law; energy, environment and natural resources; global health; global justice; international negotiation and conflict management; international political economy; and international security and cooperation. Finally, students will complete a small group practicum in which they will be required to develop solutions to current global problems.